Spells & Starfire

Perhaps he’s anti-abortion because he doesn’t believe life begins at conception and instead demands his followers be killers of actual, fully-born babies. None of this weak ass ejecting a clump of blood and cells bullshit. (Then every period would be an act of worship which would be pretty metal but maybe too easy, and again, he likes making bhaalspawn.) You’d think he could be into that, because it sounds gross and can be traumatic, but maybe not at the expense of a real proper murder, you know?

If we go by pre-death Bhaal lore, he’s not gonna be interested in killing children, whether born or not, because he wants his followers to do IMPRESSIVE murders, being the most pleased when they kill someone more powerful than themselves. So no, he’s not into killing babies or children because that’s not hard at all.

On the OTHER HAND

Guess who does really like having children sacrificed on his altars?

bane likes child sacrifice because everyone else hates it. do not go to a banite priest for an abortion, consent kills the whole vibe for him.

all of the dead three are fundamentally about power. their differences are in what they see as the ultimate exercise of it. in the original drawing of lots where the three musketeers split jergal’s godhood, bhaal’s argument for his superiority was that sure, bane had dominion over the living and myrkul the dead, but he controlled which camp a mortal would fall into. by killing, he took from bane; by not killing, he deprived myrkul.

all killing of any living thing—even animals—is an exercise of power over life and death, and therefore pleasing to bhaal. but the more difficult a victim is to kill, the more power is exercised, yeah?

there's also a difference between murder as an act of worship, and a situation where you were going to be committing some murder anyway so you shoot off a prayer to the relevant god.

one (1) source says a victim MUST be more formidable than the killer. everything else says bhaal just prefers it, and choice of victim is a matter of pragmatism: working as an assassin/mercenary/bounty hunter to support yourself, or furthering bhaal's influence either through one's temple or one's own advancement. but how anybody feels about the murder, including perpetrator and victim, doesn't matter in itself to bhaal.

a helpful tool is jurisdiction. what falls under bhaal's purview and what's more relevant to a different god? fair and honourable combat is a different guy. impulsive, indiscriminate killing is a different guy. vigilantism and vengeance is a couple different guys. suffering is shar's thing.

my take is that bhaal is cold-blooded murder with a selfish ulterior motive. if you kill because you get paid for it, that's bhaal's gig. if you kill to steal someone's stuff, hurry along an inheritance, remove a rival for a promotion, that's bhaal's gig. if you kill because you enjoy it as a skill and an artform, that's bhaal's gig. and then there's killing directly for bhaal and his interests, of course.

so when it comes to children: not ideal due to lack of challenge, but still murder. sidestepping the question of to what degree an embryo/foetus counts as an individual lifeform, i think it's fair to say that, in any case, they're so defenceless that it's simply not interesting. a bhaalist priest is not going to waste a spell slot on an abortion. (my suggestion would be selûne, goddess of pregnancy.)

when it comes to bhaalspawn: it was part of durge's religious duty to reproduce; sarevok believed seven-year-old orin would be a pleasing sacrifice. bhaal is neutral on everyone else reproducing, but he wants there to be more bhaalspawn specifically so they can kill each other. he'd probably prefer more even match-ups, like orin vs durge, but infanticide is fine. i think the best bet for a durge that doesn't want to be a parent is malicious compliance: (a) kill anyone potentially pregnant by them before conception has a chance to occur, (b) kill the baby as soon as it's born.

souls are a hot commodity for gods, as i mentioned, and so there are very firm rules on who gets them. having a god as patron is an inarguable claim. if the mortal didn't pick a patron, then it's opened up to whoever can make the best case for the mortal's life being most in line with their portfolio.

jergal is hardly even a god anymore. he's a divine functionary, kelemvor's paralegal. his portfolio, such as it is, is fatalism. waiting around until the end of the entire world and passing the time by keeping track of how people die has absolutely no resonance with anything about astarion 'radiant hopeful' ancunín.

now, jergal was tremendously powerful at one point. he's ambitious, cunning, and manipulative. he has mysterious grand schemes that have been running for like a hundred thousand years. but i don't see any way in which embezzling astarion's soul serves him.

(even if astarion is durge's lover and durge would be distraught if bhaal got his soul, imo jergal spent all his grandfatherly affection--to the extent he has any--in yoinking durge themself from bhaal. doing the balls to the wall mega-corruption it would be to grab astarion's soul for himself would be insane. but i can see him putting his thumb on the scale a little bit so e.g. mask gets him.)

Pure self-indulgence. Apologies.

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Everyone stop what you are doing. Shadow Druid Halsin dropped!

This was fun to picture. Granted, she would never.

Thank you @thesanguinesonnet!! I love vampire Bern!

IF she was ever a Vampire Ascendent's Wife.... she wouldn't be for long. She'd be busting out of there so fast on her own power trip.

She'd want to be a queen in her own land, owned by no man.

Abigail, Vampire Ascendant.

I do HC she'd be a little nuts and running around barefoot. Show up to political parties in the skimpiest stuff in the middle of winter only to literally walk off into the frost like a wraith in the night.

She'd dare Astarion to come and get her.

snippets from a brainworm:

She does not know her past. She does not know her name. But she does know one thing: she knows how to kill. And she’s very, very good at it.

My earliest memory is waking up in a hospital room, surrounded by bodies, an IV drip in my arm, and blood streaking down my hands.

I acted on instinct. I jumped. It was a sixth-floor window to hard concrete. I should not have survived that. Even with my memory in tatters, I knew that much. But I landed, absorbed the impact, and kept running.

There are predators, and there are prey. But sometimes, you can be both.

THEO SOLOMON

"He was never particularly religious, but in that moment he called upon Ilmater to bear witness to an unshakable oath upon which he would judge the very worth of his soul: that he would protect his Sufferer until his last dying breath."

Thank you for the tag @woundedsoul12, for the double tags: @bladesingerlily & @optimisticgrey, for the uno-reverses: @lucretiouswept, @gortashsrighthand, & @perpetualmaladaptivedaydream, and finally for both a tag & an uno-reverse: @litsenn! 🫶

I love you guys. 🫠

I jumped back into Mara's canon universe to write a bit of the story between her and Gale that I had planned long ago, but I hadn't sat with and fully considered how it might change their romance arc in Act 3.

It will change a bit, and I think I might like it better.

This scene takes place between Act 2 & 3. It's before the Emperor's mind flayer reveal, but after the scene when Mara made Minthara apologize to Kar'niss.

(That fun little scene was nonsensically too hot for tumblr, as I've discovered it cannot be found in any searches now. Exceedingly lame of you, hellsite. 🙄)

TW: a wizard broods and reflects with a candor he reserves for his internal monologue; mention of Durge things (including violence & murder, etc), flicks my gaze in the direction of dark Gale

Praise be the growing diversity of bt4 clothing mods. This one is by badwitch69